Moose Hunting Yukon Style

My friend Chris tempted me to come back to Canada (read: cold weather) to go on a moose hunting trip. I was deeply tempted, as I hadn't had a chance to do any real hunting in years.





























I was NOT nearly so keen on experiencing any cold weather, and putting the whole "year without winter" concept at risk. Monica was even LESS keen on the idea of that risk.

But trooper that she is, Monica decided to come back to Whitehorse, hang around for a couple weeks visiting friends while I headed off to a whole lot of nowhere to track moose with Chris.

So third week of September found us hunting in the chilly air of a lake in southern Yukon, along with Chris's labrador retriever, Cardhu.

We were flown in there by a bush pilot. It was an amazing trip. We also saw a wolf and heard wolves howling the last morning. We saw moose, and lots of them: bulls, cows and calves.

We killed a mid-size five or six-year-old bull bull two days in to the 6-day trip. Wish the time out there had been longer. It would have given us time to eat all the food we flew in. What was I thinking? I packed waay too much food. We were so busy with the hunt we didn't have time to cook let alone eat it all.

And I have to say if anyone who doesn't hunt tells you it's only for fat, lazy rednecks, you might want to consider that judgement. This was a lot of work . We spent two solid days butchering the moose meat...and that was after we got it back to camp from the field.

We now have about 400 pounds of ground meat and sausage, and about another 20 pounds of more "prime" cuts, thanks to the moose.